In Part
1of this series, I discussed how you can export data from the ExtranetCollaboration Manager for SharePoint 2010 (ExCM) database for use with other
applications, projects, etc.A far more
common question we receive is whether or not companies with data for existing
users can IMPORT that information into ExCM.In the past, we have run across potential customers who have a large
number of existing users stored in another application or database and would
rather not have to go back and manually add or register them for access to
their ExCM SharePoint extranet site.By
utilizing our free PowerShell utility, you can import users directly into an ExCM
database.

As mentioned in the previous blog post for exporting data,
after downloading the utility from link below, you'll need to edit the included
Membership.config file utility to reflect the connection string and membership
settings:

Next, we need to open up PowerShell (NOT the SharePoint
Management Shell), and navigate to the extracted files:

The import file must be in a comma-delimited format.For the purpose of this blog, I have created
some sample data in an Excel spreadsheet and exported it as a text file:

Before we continue, let’s take a quick look at passwords and
security questions.As you can see from
the above file, I have gone ahead and assigned both a password and a security
answer for the users.Optionally, you
can generate a password using the SQL Membership Provider by using the “-passwordSource
Generated” switch or use a separate password file with passwords and security
questions with the “-passwordSource PasswordFile
-passwordQuestionAndAnswerSource PasswordFile -passwordFile [filename]”
switch.Here is an example of what the
password file would look like:

For this post, I’m just going to use the values in my
original spreadsheet.Here is what my
command will look like, along with the results of the import:

If I go to my “Extranet Users” menu, I can see that all four
accounts now appear there:

Additionally, you can create a process to send an email to
each user containing the new login information such as username, password,
password question and password answer: